I recently bought an Old Town canoe with a 3 hp moter and am planning to float the Clinch this spring. I have fished the Clinch for years but feel like I missing possibly the best part of the river since I mostly fish upstream of Millers Island. I hope to get past the Saturday crowds by floating into some good shoals and fish until the water rises and float to Clinton.

Does anyone have any recommendations regarding floating the Clinch in a canoe. Where is the best place to launch Millers Island or Peach Grove?

I will try to make this float during a pulsing schedule so I will be able to wade during minimal flows if the current is not to strong. Any advice would be apprecated.

The PO to Clinton float is very long on a low water pusling schedule. Lot's of shallow water, several good shoals, one nasty shoal, then the rocky final mile. Running the engine could help but your going to have to spend a lot of time running the river before you find lines that will allow you to run it without tearing the prop off. Much easier to do on a solid one turbine flow, but still plenty of places to rip off a prop. I'd say the first few times you try this float you'll be in the water over ten hours, especially if your getting out to wade some shoals.

From the PO boatramp, you can put in and motor downstream to the first set of shoals and get back just fine, or you can motor upstream about a mile or so with care.

The millers to PO float is much mre doable in length for low water. There's a few places you could use your motor but for the most part I'd save it for the area around the interstate if it's windy. Quite a bit of good wadable water, but also a lot of deep water. And you probably already know from Massengill upstream. Watch out for the upper end and the lower end of MI because the riffles get pretty rough with no flow and dragging your boat will proabably be the norm there unless you time a pulse as it's falling.

Now the canoe with a motor would probably kick some major butt up in the weir pool! You can paddle a lot of it until you learn the lay and then that little motor would proabably be perfect.

Oh....BTW. The Clinch seems to fish pretty well with one turbine rolling, streamers and deep nymph rigs. Two turbines is much tougher with sink lines and streamers, but pretty dangerous out of a canoe.

I've floated the Clinch in paddle powered canoes with the water off and the other poster is right... it is a looong day from the peach orchard to Clinton Bridge, but it can be rewarding. *There are several calm stretches, however, that the motor will help you with, especially if the wind is blowing upstream (it always is). *Once the water comes up, you can move along at a pretty brisk clip, but you are at the mercy of the schedulers at TVA.

With one generator running, a small aluminum boat can be used, but you may have to lift the engine in spots and wading spots are pretty rare as I recall. *With two running, well, you need the first 5 horsepower just to match the current. *

I'm sure you know, but in Tennessee, ANY powered boat (electric or gas, regardless of size) must be registered. *Your post was a couple of months ago, but if you haven't, make sure you have the boat registered before the TWRA shows up in numbers as the traffic picks up.